With Sigourney’s death, with the city a smoking ruin around him, Jan could have taken the title of Kraljiki himself; he’d chosen to give Nessantico and the Holdings to his matarh instead: a gesture of mockery.
She had turned his mockery into a true gift, he had to admit. That was evident now.
Jan’s carriage, drawn by three white horses in a four-horse harness, followed immediately behind the bier. He could hear the chanting of the teni who walked alongside the bier, which appeared to float in a white cloud. Above the body, huge images of the Kraljica appeared and vanished again: there she was as she appeared in her official portrait; there she dedicated the rebuilt dome of the Old Temple, there she smiled as she descended from the balcony during the Gschnas.
The smell of trumpet-flowers accompanied her, and the sound of the musicians in the open carriage ahead of the bier, playing Darkmavis and ce’Miella: a fusing of ancient and modern.
The old giving way to the new. Jan found it compelling.
“Look-they’re cheering for you, Vatarh,” Elissa said happily, pointing and waving herself. And it was true, as the bier passed, as their open carriage followed, the mourning morphed into applause and smiles. “They like you.”
“They’re cheering because they don’t have a choice,” Jan told her, and Brie frowned.
“Jan…”
“It’s true, and the children should understand that,” he answered her. He leaned forward across to where the children were sitting, ignoring the pull of the stitches and the twinge in his chest. “The people will applaud you as long as they think you’re going to keep food in their bellies and a roof over their heads. They’ll applaud you when they fear you, too, because they’re afraid that if they don’t, they’ll be punished. Don’t mistake their smiles and applause for anything more than a facade.”
He felt Brie’s hand on his arm. “Darling, please. They don’t understand what you’re saying, and you’re just scaring them. And you shouldn’t be so cynical. Not today of all days.”
She was right, and he knew it. He glimpsed the ornate handle of the sparkwheel fitted to an embossed leather holder on her belt: the gorgeous sparkwheel Varina and the Numetodo had presented to her after the battle. The citizens of Nessantico were cheering Brie, he knew: the success of the sparkwheeler corps in the battle was already a legend in the city, and it appeared that the A’Hirzg in Brie had become the favorite of the city. “I’m sorry,” he told her, told the children. “You’re right…”
They continued around the ring boulevard, and he continued to smile and wave. Because it was expected. Because it was his duty. They clattered over the Pontica A’Kralji, where, in iron gibbets, the skeletal body of the Westlander war-teni Sergei had killed and the Westlander Tehuantin were displayed in gory triumph. Jan barely glanced at their bodies.
The procession ended at the courtyard of the Kraljica’s Palais at dusk. The bier floated on its mage-cloud to the summit of the pile of oil-soaked timbers set well away from the wings of the palais: the pyre that would send Allesandra’s soul into the arms of Cenzi, placed in the center of the Kraljica’s gardens. The ca’-and-cu’ of the city and of the Holdings and Coalition both, the chevarittai in their dress uniforms of blue and gold or black and silver, Sergei ca’Rudka, Starkkapitan ca’Damont, Commandant ca’Talin of the Garde Civile: they were all here, watching as Jan and his family descended from their carriage.
Jan looked a last time at his matarh’s body. He nodded to Talbot, who gestured to the fire-teni arrayed around the pyre. Their hands danced an intricate ballet together; their voices mingled in a slow chant. Fire bloomed orange-red between their hands as they gestured, as if tossing petals toward the pyre. Flames crackled and hissed in fury, licking at the oil and climbing rapidly. The mage-cloud vanished under a pall of writhing white that rose to the height of the palais roof before the wind smeared it across the sky. The flames touched the bier itself; Jan could see trumpet-flowers withering and curling under as Allesandra’s body became lost in the heat waver and smoke. The furious crackling and popping of the fire echoed from the walls of the palais and the insistent heat drove everyone a few steps back from the pyre.
A log collapsed in the pyre, sending sparks coiling wildly upward. Jan realized that he’d been watching the fire burn for far longer than he’d thought, that the sky was growing dark.
“We can go now, Kraljiki,” Talbot said. The title sounded strange to Jan. “They’re ready in the hall…”
The Hall of the Sun Throne was packed. The windows in the long room flickered red with the flames of the pyre, while the great window behind the throne showed the dusk sky, already a deep violet with the first stars beginning to glisten above. The Council of Ca’ was seated before the throne, with the other dignitaries. A’Teni ca’Beranger waited with Talbot alongside the Sun Throne. Brie gave the children to the nursemaids and approached the dais of the throne alongside Jan.
The Sun Throne. The massive chair sculpted from a single massive crystal towered more than two men high, a mottled, semitransparent white. It loomed over Jan and Brie. As he stared at the throne, he twisted the signet ring on his hand, the gold and silver of the ring cold and smooth on his flesh. “This is what you were meant for, my husband,” Brie whispered to him. He glanced over to her, saw that she was looking at his hands. “You know that,” she said. “Your matarh did, too.”
“She had a strange way of showing it.”
“She was meant for it also. That was the problem.” She gestured toward the throne. “There it is,” she said. “It’s yours, my love.”
Jan glanced toward Talbot. He nodded. Behind a door at the far rear of the hall, just behind the throne, two light-teni were chanting. Talbot had told him how in the last century, the Sun Throne barely reacted to the signet ring, that it was instead the work of especially trusted and skilled light-teni who ensured that the proper response came when a Kralji sat on the crystal.
Jan had laughed at that revelation-another sham, another show.
Jan ascended the dais, A’Teni ca’Beranger giving him the sign of Cenzi as he passed. On reaching the throne, he turned to face the crowd. They were watching him, all of them.
He sat. The crystal around him erupted with brilliant yellow light, seeming to emerge from the hidden depths of the throne. Kraljiki Jan sat, bathed in that light, as the audience rose in thunderous applause.
“I’ll always wonder what the Holdings might have been had you lived,” Sergei said to the portrait of Kraljica Marguerite. “I’d love to know what you think of things now.”
The wine he’d had was making his head spin a bit. Downstairs, in the palais, the celebration for the new Kraljiki was still going on while, outside, the embers of Allesandra’s pyre glowed red in the night. Sergei had slipped away from the festivities via the servants’ corridors to come up here-to the chambers that had been Allesandra’s and which were now Jan’s. A goblet of wine still in his hand, he raised it to Marguerite’s portrait as he lounged in a chair. A small fire-set to take away the evening chill-crackled in the hearth below the portrait, the fire and the candles lit to either side giving a wavering illumination that lent animation to Marguerite’s painted, stern face. He could imagine her stirring, opening her mouth to talk to him…